The Innu have taken their opposition to the Churchill Falls II hydro project to Geneva.
In an address to a United Nations working group, Innu lawyer Armand McKenzie called the Hydro-Quebec megaproject a “vast enterprise of colonialism and economic imperialism toward the Innu.” McKenzie is the spokesman for seven Innu communities in Quebec, who have yet to be consulted about the project on their land.
McKenzie called on Canada and Quebec to speed up negotiations on the Innu land claim in Quebec, which has been stumbling along for decades without any resolution.
Construction of the $10-billion, 3,000-megawatt project is scheduled to start in 2002.
“Since the beginning of our struggle, we have insisted on the fact that we are not anti-development, but we demand respect of our territory, our way of life and our
rights,” McKenzie told the UN working group, which is studying an international indigenous peoples’ charter.
“In the event that the project is viable and justified on both environmental andeconomic grounds, we are ready to negotiate with Quebec and Newfoundland,” he said, as quoted in La Presse.“But at this stage of the project, the inconveniences appear to us to be much greaterthan the benefits.”
